Furness Litfest is a development of Dalton Litfest which ran from 2017-18 very successfully. It was decided to expand the Festival geographically and thus change its name to incorporate enthusiasm and organisations from Barrow, Ulverston and the various villages in Furness.
The Festival was the brainchild of Margaret Martindale who remains our Chair, with the other two original trustees still in place: Dorothy King as Treasurer and Ron Creer as Festival Director. We now have other committee members to add to our strength..
The Festival aims to bring a love of reading and writing to the Furness communities through performances, workshops and other events.
It is now a biennial Festival held in early November in odd number years, mostly using Dalton Community Centre as a base since Dalton is the ancient capital and is central between the two larger conurbations, but with some events in other venues.
It plans to bring established authors for ticketed interviews and talks, a programme of workshops in schools, various community “happenings” on a literary theme, and one major project for each Festival.
The major project in 2017 was a community poem written by Sarah Miller based on people’s thoughts of life in Dalton today. Then in 2018 we had a Heritage Lottery funded project called “Daltonia” where events from the town’s history were shown in three commissioned and performed plays. See the report on Daltonia. We have another major project planned for 2019.